


Something of Value

by rudbeckia



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: First Time, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Marmot Kylux Fest (Star Wars), Second Time, The Force Made Them Do It (Star Wars), Time Loop, and third time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:41:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29407101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudbeckia/pseuds/rudbeckia
Summary: Ren insists that Hux has to accompany him on a trip planetside to retrieve a Sith artefact from the (rumoured) site of an ancient temple.The Force has other ideas.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 12
Kudos: 56
Collections: Kylux Marmot Fest





	Something of Value

A speck glowed in the distance, subtending an angle only just large enough for Armitage Hux to know for sure he was looking at the crescent-lit disc of a planet and not a faint speck of debris. He’d had the internal lighting dimmed for this—pointlessly in his opinion, since the sensor arrays could feed a pinpoint-sharp image to the main holo display—but Kylo Ren had insisted. The hulking brute stood a little to Hux’s left and behind him. Hux could feel his presence like a shiver slithering up his spine.

“That’s the one.” Kylo marched forwards, jostling Hux’s shoulder on the way past, as if moving three paces closer to the viewport would make the planet look any bigger. “I can sense it.” He turned to face Hux, his gaze even more unsettling without the helmet than it ever had been with it. At least, Hux thought, the helmet once lent Ren a modicum of mystery. Without it, he thought with a sneer twisting his face, Ren looked....

_cruel imposing dangerous beautiful_

No, no, that definitely wasn’t it. Hux sighed, blowing the breath slowly out through flared nostrils. Ren was watching him, eyes boring into his. Hux fought the creeping urge to look away and glared back. “I have a squadron of Phasma’s finest stormtroopers at your disposal,” he said, pulling his lips up into a satisfied smile. “I’m sure they will—”  
“No.” Kylo smiled and pointed a forefinger at Hux, almost prodding him in the chest. “You will accompany me. The ritual demands it.”

Hux’s anger flared and his face reddened. “Ren, I can’t possibly leave the Finalizer for some magic ritual on a nowhere planet. I am needed here.”  
Ren cocked an eyebrow and smiled. “No, you’re not. I command you to accompany me on this mission. He can do your job.”  
Kylo pointed at one of the younger captains. Hux gritted his teeth and gave Ren a curt nod. “Very well. Captain Opan, you have command until I return.” He acknowledged Opan’s immediate _yessir_ with a salute.  
Ren smirked again. “Be ready to board my personal shuttle in one hour.”  
Ren walked off the bridge. Hux hated him.

One hour later, with The Finalizer performing lazy geosynchronous orbits of the planet, Hux sat in Ren’s shuttle, horrified that the Supreme Leader intended to pilot it himself.  
“I will personally choose the best pilot in the fleet,” Hux insisted. “Someone whose function it is to land us safely and bring us back. Someone with years of training and experience in not wrecking shuttles.”  
“No,” Kylo said. “I’m the best pilot in the fleet, and you know it.” He turned to glare at Hux. “And I got that way by taking risks that others balked at. Because I can sense changes in the Force that allow me to be faster, better, braver, utterly without fear.”  
“If you have no fear then it is not bravery, it is recklessness,” Hux argued. “Use a pilot.” He took a deep breath, held it, forced his fists to unclench, and let the breath out again. Just before he ran out of air to exhale, he added, “Please.”

Ren scoffed, shook his head, ordered him to shut up, and shot the small craft out of the shuttle bay so fast that Hux thought he might have left his stomach behind.

The trip down to the planet’s surface should have taken half as long at half the speed and should not, in Hux’s opinion, have involved as many fly-pasts and slingshots of other moons, asteroids and assorted rocks in this sithforsaken system. But eventually Ren got bored of showing off and landed the shuttle on a flat enough area of the rounded, igneous summit of a mountain where the sides of a volcano had eroded away to sand and dust, leaving the solidified magma plug behind as evidence that the planet had once been a hot, dangerous and violent place.

Hux chuckled to himself and stole a glance at Ren, with his wavy hair swept back from his forehead and his face set in the grin he always wore after piloting himself.

_hot, dangerous and violent_

No. Not that. Irritating, reckless and unpredictable. Hux got up as soon as he trusted his legs and his balance, and marched out of the shuttle. Ren already stood with his arms raised, his head back and the wind whipping at his cloak and hair. Hux shivered although the air that buffeted him was warm. Ren whooped with joy. “This is it, Hux,” he said. “This is the place. Can’t you feel it?”  
Hux turned up the collar of his greatcoat against the encroachment of imaginary dust and sand grains brought up on the wind from the green and golden plains below. “No. How long will this take?”  
“It will take,” Ren said solidly, “as long as it takes.”

Hux tightened his lips and squinted up to where the Finalizer ought to be, too high above to see even as the smallest speck against the system’s sun. It gave him a sense of isolation, abandonment, that he knew was false. But it unsettled him all the same. If he acquiesced to Ren’s ridiculous demands, perhaps he would get back to civilisation all the sooner.

“This way,” Ren said, walking away. Hux traipsed after him, appreciating the pockets of green, frond-like plants that clung to the rock and sent tendrils out blindly, seeking cracks in which to anchor their clones. Movement at the edge of his vision betrayed that small, fearful creatures hid amongst the meagre plant life. Hux almost yelled in surprise when a sand-coloured, furred creature about the size of his cat popped up on a rock, chittered at him then vanished.

Ren laughed. “What’s the matter, Hux? Did one of the local squirrels scare you?”  
“When you dragged me on a mission,” Hux relied drily, “I expected a ruined temple, a Sith artefact and maybe some gratitude.”  
Ren paused to let Hux catch up a little. “Oh, you’ll get all those,” he said. “Two out of three, anyway.”

Ren resumed his march and Hux fell in beside him. The ground became more forgiving underfoot as they gradually descended from the rounded summit and soon they were in shelter below the tree line. Hux took a deep, resin-scented breath and sighed. “Are we nearly there yet?”  
Ren nodded and pointed through the soaring trunks. “It’s there. We’re so close. Can’t you feel anything?”  
Hux gave Ren an imperious look. “Do you mean apart from the cold? No, Ren. Of course not.”  
Ren laughed and shook his head but said nothing more.

Apart from the sounds of boots crunching on dried needle-like leaves and cracking fallen twigs, Hux’s own breathing when he sucked in the thin air and puffed it out as he kept up with Ren - almost - and the occasional rustle and chitter of the squirrels, the forest was silent. Ren led Hux further down the slope, under a canopy that thickened, darkening the forest floor to a grey-brown dapple. Here and there, light filtered through gaps and green saplings raced up to stake their places in the canopy. Abruptly, the vegetation stopped and Hux found himself at the edge of a circular clearing. In the centre was a structure that might have once been a tower, a tree so large that Hux craned his neck to see just how tall it was, and Kylo Ren.

“This is it!”  
Hux had never seen Ren so delighted about anything. “Good,” he replied with a curt nod. “You can get your... whatever it was you came for and we can leave.”  
Ren walked closer to the tree, reached one hand out to brush his fingers against the rough-looking bark, and snatched his hand away as the brown bark blackened under his touch and the crevices glowed eerily crimson. Hux took a few steps back to where brown earth gave way to purple-tipped grass, and watched, transfixed, as Ren reached out to lay both palms on the tree. The bark responded as before, browns turning to stark blacks and reds like charcoal thrown onto embers. Hux edged around the perimeter as the discolouration spread around and up from Ren’s hands. He saw that Ren’s eyes were closed, his brow was damp with perspiration and his lips moved as he chanted unintelligible syllables.

With a roar of frustration, Ren leapt back from the tree and crouched on the bare ground, glaring at it. “Come on!” he yelled. “I did everything. I brought him with me.” Ren pointed at Hux. “Give me what I want!”

Hux’s face twisted with anger and he marched to where Ren still crouched. “What do you mean _I brought him with me,_ Ren?”  
Ren groaned and looked up into Hux’s face. “For the ritual. I was supposed to bring something I valued.”  
Momentarily perplexed while he processed Ren’s words, Hux stood with his jaw slack and his brows drawn down. Then he shook his head and carefully composed his face into some semblance of neutrality. “Well. If I was some kind of sacrifice then I am glad to see that it has not worked. Can we go now?”  
“Whatever,” Ren grumbled, standing up and shaking out his robe. “We will remain in orbit. I will consult the Sith texts to find out what I missed from the ritual.”  
Ren pushed past Hux to find his way back through the dense forest. Hux caught up with Ren, then Hux’s thoughts caught up with Hux. “So the ritual decrees that you bring something of value to you, and you brought me?”  
“Something of value, yes,” Ren replied. “You are my general. Don’t overthink it.”

Hux blinked. Wasn’t there just a forest? No. There was the biting wind and the open blue sky and the sithforsaken ground they trudged over. Something chittered and whistled at him from a rock and he let out a little squeal of surprise.  
Ren laughed. “What’s the matter, Hux? Did one of the local squirrels scare you?”  
“When you dragged me on a mission,” Hux relied drily, “I expected a ruined temple, a Sith artefact and maybe some gratitude.”  
Ren paused to let Hux catch up a little. “Oh, you’ll get all those,” he said. “Two out of three, anyway.”  
Ren stopped and looked at Hux thoughtfully. Hux scowled back. “Is there a problem, Supreme Leader?”  
“No,” Ren said, shaking his head as if to dislodge a thought. “No problem. This way, it is not too far. We have a hike through a forest to a clearing. The force has shown me.”

Armitage followed, slowing his pace a little when Ren also slowed. Perhaps, he thought as he sucked the air into his lungs, the supreme leader is also feeling the depleted level of oxygen in this planet’s atmosphere. “I wonder,” he said as he caught up beside Ren, “if the relatively low level of oxygen means there are no large life forms here.”  
“Except those,” Ren said, indicating the trees ahead of them and slightly lower in altitude. “Plants are very much alive.”  
Hux bristled. “You know what I meant.”

Soon they reached a clearing that made Hux wonder if it had been blasted into existence from orbit. Squared-off but eroded boulders littered the space and, a little off-centre, there was a ring shaped structure that may once have been the foundations of a tower. The centre of the clearing was dominated by the biggest tree Hux had ever seen—even bigger than the ones in the holos he’d seen of Kashyyyk. He shook off the familiar, slightly unreal feeling as a bout of déjà vu brought on by physical exertion in a suboptimal atmosphere. He frowned. Ren was holding out his hand.

“Hux, come here.” Hux walked slowly towards Ren. Ren smiled. “I think you need to join me for this part.”  
“Whatever for?” Hux snapped, contrariness at least partly from habit. “You’re the force-magician. What part could I possibly play in this?”  
Ren’s expression slipped into irritation. “Just do as I ask and maybe you’ll get back to your precious ship sooner.”  
Hux sighed. “Well then.” He walked up to Ren. “What do I have to do?”  
Uncertainty flashed across Ren’s face. “I’m not sure, exactly. Do what I do.”

Hux watched as Ren brushed the tree with his fingertips and snatched his hand back. Nothing happened.  
“Scared it’ll bite?” Hux placed his own hand on the rough bark. “It is not like you to be reticent, Supreme Leader.” Ren frowned, looking more perplexed than annoyed. “What did you think would happen?”  
Ren closed his eyes and laid his palms against the trunk. “Like this, Hux, and concentrate.”  
Hux copied Ren. “Concentrate on what?”  
“I don’t know! Something that matters to you, I suppose. Next week’s duty rosters. I don’t care.”

Hux bit back his retort that overseeing duty rosters was a task for a major or a captain far beneath his rank in case Ren’s capricious nature led to his demotion. Instead, he thought about Kylo Ren’s stupid face, his stupid smirk, and Hux’s own fist punching his stupid nose until blood gushed. Then he conjured up an image of Ren’s face in close up, Ren smiling softly just for him, Ren’s lips warm on his. The tree bark blackened under his hands and the crevices glowed red. Ren gaped at Hux, whose eyes were still closed and whose face looked serene, unaware.  
“You! How are you doing that? It can’t be you. The effort should kill you.”

Hux opened his eyes and glared. “What are you talking about, Ren?” He saw the blacks and reds of the tree and snatched his hands away. When he looked, the tree was as brown and green and beige as he might have expected from a picture book.  
“You connected with the force tree instead of me. Tell me what it showed you.”  
“It showed me you,” Hux said, face twisting into a snarl. “Only not.” He waved a hand up and down, indicating Ren’s form. “Not like the nerf-herder you really are.”  
Ren’s face opened in surprise. “Nerf herder? Are you saying I’m—”  
“Rude. Scruffy.”

Hux bit his lip, wishing he could take the words back before Ren threw him aside or choked him with the force. But Ren did neither of those things.  
“Scruffy,” Ren said, looking down at his garb. then he looked at Hux and grinned. “You like me scruffy looking.”  
“Your ritual didn’t work,” Hux said, shaking his arms out and marching away. “Let’s get back to the Finalizer and you can do all the navel-gazing you like when we’re home.”  
Around them, creatures chittered.

Ren watched Hux as he exited the shuttle and took his first few heaving breaths of the atmosphere that was breathable, but marginal. “Hey,” he said. “Are you okay?”  
“What do you care?” Hux snapped, head spinning just a little. “Excuse me,” he said a moment later. “I’m not used to being planetside. The sky. It’s... big.”  
“You’re okay,” Ren replied. “I promise. The force wants you _I want you_ alive and well. Trust me.”  
“Trust you?” Hux laughed harshly. “Why am I here, Ren? Were you concerned that if you left the Finalizer with me aboard I might order us to abandon you?”  
Ren smiled at Hux. “Wouldn’t you?”  
Hux sighed then took a deep, deep breath. “No. I can’t believe I’m admitting this,” he said, wondering if the low oxygen content of the atmosphere had made him dull. “But I need you. For the Order, of course.”  
“For the order,” Ren echoed. “Of course. It’s this way. There’s a hike but it’s mostly downhill, through a forest. Mind your footing and tell me if you want to slow down or rest.”

Hux griped but Ren didn’t listen to his words, only felt for his presence in the force and decided Hux was not in any real discomfort. When Hux seemed to be struggling, Ren slowed down, waited, and took his hand. He felt Hux consider shaking him off and let go.  
“Hold on to me if you want,” Ren said. “It’s rough underfoot, but it’ll get easier once we reach the tree line.”  
A creature the size of Hux’s pet cat leapt up onto a rock nearby and whistled at them. Hux started in surprise. Ren laughed. “What’s the matter, Hux? Did one of the local squirrels scare you?”  
“When you dragged me on a mission,” Hux relied drily, “I expected a ruined temple, a Sith artefact and maybe some gratitude.”

Ren paused to let Hux recover. “Oh, you’ll get all those,” he said. “I promise. Thank you for agreeing to accompany me. I know you were reluctant, but I feel through the force that it matters you’re here willingly.”  
“Well,” Hux said, leaning against Ren for support in the thin air. “You are my Supreme Leader and you commanded me. So here I am.”  
“It’s more than that,” Ren said, slipping his arm around Hux’s back. “And I think you feel that too.”

Hux frowned at Ren’s words but accepted support since the atmosphere was breathable but not oxygen-rich enough to allow a strenuous marching pace. Soon they were walking between tall trees, talking when necessary. Hux mentioned that he had seen holos about Kashyyyk and Ren stopped, faced him with a surprised expression, and said that he had been there once for Lifeday and seen the magnificent trees where the Wookiee population thrived.

Hux smiled at Ren’s reminiscing. “Wait till you see what’s in the centre of this forest,” Hux said. “Even you won’t fail to be impressed.” His face fell into confusion. “Wait. How could I know this? Ren? What have you done!”  
“It’s not me,” Ren replied, wrapping his arms around Hux, waiting to be pushed off and insulted and that not happening. “It’s something about this place. It feels so familiar, like I’ve been here before. With you. But I know I have not. Like there’s something off about it.”  
“Ren—”  
“Shut up.” Ren cut Hux off with harsh words spoken softly, without malice. It’s only the two of them here and he knew Hux felt as unsettled as he did. “Concentrate. Not on your usual tasks. Concentrate on what you feel here and now. Can you do that, Armitage? While we walk?”

Armitage nodded. Ren, he hated to admit, was right. This whole trip felt so familiar, from seeing the squirrel that reminded him of Millicent to... to.... to what? What was the end result of this trip? Ren was supposed to retrieve some Sith artefact, or learn some great truth or... or something. Hux didn’t really care as long as he got back safely to the Finalizer. His mind settled, calmed by the sedate walk and the fact that Ren was also calm and by his side. If only that were more common, he thought. Ren content in his company instead of... of what?

“Armitage.” Ren had stopped walking at the edge of a clearing in the forest. Hux peered at him.  
“Kylo,” he said. “You called me by my informal name. Now, and before. Why?”  
“It felt right. Armitage,” Ren looked deep into Hux’s eyes. “I feel like—”  
“Are you prying into my mind? Because if you are—“  
“No! Armitage, I am not. You would feel it if I did. There’s something happening to us here. You must feel it. I know you feel it too.”

Unsure, but swayed by Ren’s strength of emotion, Hux nodded. He closed his eyes and concentrated. “There is a clearing with a tree. It glows when you touch it.”  
“When you touch it,” Ren said in perfect synch.  
They frowned at each other. “I saw it glow when you touched it,” Hux said.  
“And I saw it glow when you touched it,” Ren replied.  
“So if we both touch it,” Hux said, “then—”  
“If we touch it as one being, not two,” Ren added. “Armitage, we must be of one mind. Or it won’t work and we’ll be thrown back into this time loop.”  
Armitage nodded. “Very well. I defer to your superior but overrated knowledge of the force. How do we approach this?”

Ren thought for a moment, lower lip held between his teeth, eyes on Hux but unfocused. “If we were of one mind, we would also be of one body.” He focused his gaze on Hux again and smiled.  
Hux rolled his eyes and laughed. “Oh,” he said quietly. “You think we should have sex.”

It was over quickly, all hands and mouths and awkwardness. Then it was desperate, needy and wanting. Then it was a slower, more considerate, more satisfying thing, with gentle, questioning, touches and hints and heat and laughter. After that, they lay together in the warmth of each other’s embrace and wondered why they hadn’t thought to approach each other for comfort before.

An alert chimed harshly on the datapad beside Armitage’s bed. He read it and tapped Kylo on the shoulder, twice, then once harder.  
“Kylo, love, there’s a system nearby. Forested, mountainous planet, marginal atmosphere, reputed to have a Sith temple. There might be a holocron for your collection.”  
Kylo grumbled in half-sleep. “Does it mean getting out of bed on your day off duty?” he asked.  
“Yes,” Armitage replied. “I thought you’d jump at the chance to recover some dusty old piece of junk. Isn’t it worth it?”  
Kylo turned to face Armitage and enclosed him in his arms. He shut his eyes and made a shushing noise while he concentrated, sending his thoughts out through the force around the planet.  
“No,” he said after a minute, holding Armitage closer. “There’s nothing new for us there. I’d rather stay in bed with you.”


End file.
